The National Aeronautics and Space Administration took to Instagram to release new photos of the 'dumpling'-shaped moon, Pan, which is the closest moon orbiting Saturn.
Harvard professor Avi Loeb talks about the questions surrounding UFOs after NASA said there is no connection to aliens.Saturn's moons"Ravioli, pierogi, empanada... What do you see? No wrong answers," NASA posted on its Instagram account Monday, accompanied by pictures of Pan, the innermost of Saturn's moons.
The photos, which were taken from the Cassini spacecraft, show the unique moon in a new level of detail.These images of Pan, Saturn's innermost moon, were taken from different perspectives: The left image appears to be a view from above the moon while the right image seems to be from below. The moon has a flat ridge around its midpoint and lines across its surface.
According to the space agency, the ridge around the equator of Pan has similar characteristics to Atlas, another moon that orbits Saturn. That ridge gives Pan its unique"dumpling" shape, according to NASA. Pan orbits Saturn from inside a gap in one of the planet's rings, the post explained, making an orbit around the planet every 13.8 hours at an altitude of 83,000 miles.
The two images show how the Cassini spacecraft's perspective of Pan changed as it passed within 15,300 miles of the moon, the craft's closest everThis montage shows Saturn and its moons Dione, front, Tethys and Mimas, right, Enceladus and Rhea, left, and Titan, distant top.
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